We need to stop using pre-internet dawah in the internet age. Simple platitudes might have worked 20 years ago, maybe 10 years ago. But now, those tired lines are only cause for more confusion and dissatisfaction. All it takes is a simple internet search.

The reality is, Islam is at great odds with the social and intellectual status quo all around us. There are no two ways about it. You simply cannot defend Islam and simultaneously appease the widely accepted, powerful ideologies currently in vogue. That doesn’t mean that we cannot defend Islam in a compelling, intellectually satisfying way. It just means that, certain conflicts between Islam and the moral, political, and epistemological theories of the day are incommensurable.

Those who want to spread the message of Islam need to embrace this fact. If you want to take the easy way out by throwing the Islamic tradition under the bus whenever you face a hard issue or otherwise misrepresenting or censoring that tradition, you might need to consider pursuing another line of work.

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Man! Finally I find someone who talks about this subject. This post is very true. May Allah(sw) reward who wrote it.

“You simply cannot defend Islam and simultaneously appease the widely accepted, powerful ideologies currently in vogue. That doesn’t mean that we cannot defend Islam in a compelling, intellectually satisfying way. It just means that, certain conflicts between Islam and the moral, political, and epistemological theories of the day are incommensurable”
Very very true!

“The reality is, Islam is at great odds with the social and intellectual status quo all around us. ”

Is that one reason why Islam is loathed by general society? Or he would also say that Christianity is also at odds with the social and intellectual zeitgeist of liberalism? Christians are less persecuted even if it not as compatible with liberalism.

And btw Christianity is extremely at odds but what we have today is not Christianity. It’s secularist beatdown of Christianity. You people have already surrendered to society and use verbal gymnastics to try and pretend as if the ‘Christianity’ of today is the real version of Christianity.
It clearly is not.

Daniel is certainly no Plato or even Hume. Daniel may get lots of likes on Facebook, but he cannot write good dialogues. Plato and Hume’s characters tend to give real objections (although the character Demea in Dialogues concerning Natural Religion is fairly weak, but it at least he is fairly strong compared Daniel’s characters). I generally believe that actual liberals are more articulate, and would not use platitudes that much.

As for myself, I tend to be mildly biased towards removing partitions, as I prefer the one large prayer room model for a masjid. However, I been to several small masjids, and during Friday jummah, the men’s section is filled up, while the woman has some space, even the room is smaller. I tend to be charitable by explaining that this is what they could get for a masjid, and this is best way to act according to the Sunnah with the resources available. I do not think there is a systemic apartheid among Muslims where I live, as there was in the South with the Jim Crow laws.

I talked to a muslimah about this and she said that she really didn’t support the progressivism, but she is doesn’t like Trump but she is not heavily interest in foreign policy issues that I am and the other Muslims I know. I specifically said that one could say that the unequal accommodations resembles the “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy vs. Ferguson, but I sincerely asking for her opinion not to foment grievance, be polemical, or start a fitna. I also ask this to compare how woman are treated in Catholic worship services where men and women intermingle, especially during the gesture of peace, after the “Our Father”. She was against woman imams because we are prohibited from praying during our periods so one cannot perform all the duties of an imam in that period and that jummah is not fard for women.

Again, I am sympathetic towards liberalism (but I do not consider myself to be Muslim equivalent of a Catholic asking for woman priests or ending priestly celibacy).

I am certainly not sympathetic to these types of “reformers”:

ASRA NOMANI: I felt like this entire election year, we have just silenced so many people. I am a happy liberal. I believe in progressive values. But I do believe that we have a liberal honor brigade nowadays that is basically shutting up and silencing people who disagree with them. We see them marching in the streets right now because they don’t like the election result. And unfortunately, whenever anybody would speak up, we were ridiculed or chastised.

You know, even now the idea of speaking out as somebody who voted for Trump is earning me all sorts of lovely labels like ‘idiot’ and ‘f***er’ and all these other ideas that I think violate liberal values of free speech and self-determination. So I spoke out because I also believe we have to stand up for the dignity of all people and Trump voters are human beings, too.

Asra Nomani is a so-called “progressive Muslim” who has been compared to Rosa Parks for insisting on praying in the men’s only area at a masjid. It should be clear to someone who is socially naive and even charitable that she is practically a traitor. I would actually say that “munafiq” is more apt term than “f***er” or “idiot”, since the best explanation for her behavior is that she is using contemporary liberal values to undermine the deen and actually supports the national security state’s actions against Muslims, effectively supporting the state’s repression against the ummah. I also found it very hypocritical that a supposed liberal and progressive voted for Trump.

Although I do not wear hijab except around the masjid, I would never encourage anyone to take off their hijabs. Many Muslims (and myself) regard it as fard (like), and it is disgusting to hear a Muslim tell other Muslims not to do something that reflects an act of taqwa and submission to Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. (I think my actual reasons for not currently wearing is due to vanity and a lack of courage to identify as a Muslim. For instance, I sometimes go to Mass, and wearing a hijab there would just be weird and be seen as a very provocative statement.)

I find the notion that woman are like uncovered lollipops and a hijab is a wrapper to be a parody of Islam. I hope that many Muslims do not subscribe to such a view.

“I find the notion that woman are like uncovered lollipops and a hijab is a wrapper to be a parody of Islam. I hope that many Muslims do not subscribe to such a view.”

Sadly, not a parody, but a very common opinion amongst Muslims.

“Qatari cleric Dr. Sultan Al-Hashmi said in a recent Friday sermon that one of the causes of sexual harassment was that women leave their homes without a veil. “If young men did not see in these women things that lead them to harass them, by Allah, they would not do that,” he said. His advice to women was to cut down on the times they leave the house, and to do so only when necessary. “A woman is not allowed to leave the home unveiled, or dressed in a way that attracts the gaze of boys and men, who might harass her,” said Al-Hashmi”

I also talked to a secular, feminist philosophy professor who studies woman philosophers and also has interest in the philosophy of religion. She is not a political Islamophobe. However, she says that religion in general regard women’s bodies as “evil” and have to be covered up. She said that religion is a driving force for misogyny (because it provides theological legitimacy), and that most progressive feminist movements are secular. I concurred with her by saying that East Germany was an example of a secular state that institutionally enforced equality of the sexes (in the same way Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education institutionally enforced desegregation on a federal level, and I would say for the better). (I actually support those reforms because they positively affected the material conditions of women, while contemporary feminism, being more liberal than Marxist, focuses less on materialism, but rather attacks amorphous patriarchal attitudes.) Her point was there seems to no or little religious impulse for gender equality.